Twitter Chats — realtime conversations organized around a hashtag — have been in the news quite a bit lately as a number of vendors have introduced new tools for hosting and participating in chats. The latest entrant: a unique new tool from Nestivity that allows organizers to host a Tweetcast: a realtime Twitter conversation around a central piece of content — a document, image, video, poll, presentation, or even a live Google+ hangout. The tool also de-clutters the stream by filtering out retweets and allows moderators to highlight specific tweets in the main content window.

The company believes that moderators can use the media window to better structure Twitter chats, which can often be difficult to follow when there is a high volume of active participants. Nestivity founder Henry Min says that the Tweetcasts platform “adds a new level to tweet-based chat experiences by including a live webcast-like component and a more distilled feed to allow for an authentic conversation that is easy to moderate, and easy to join.”

Participants access the chat via a shared URL, where they will see the content and be able to participate in a live Twitter chat on the side of the screen. The displayed content is controlled by a moderator, who can load a variety of rich media assets ahead of time, or add new content during the chat.

After the close of a live event, Tweetcasts remain accessible as an ongoing discussion topic within the organizer’s Nestivity community. Followers can reference content and add new comments. For organizers who host recurring tweet-based chats, the conversation can pick-up where it left off rather than start over at the beginning.

Nestivity is a start up that introduced the ability to organize Twitter accounts into communities at SXSW this year. Now in Beta, the platform organizes tweets into structured conversations that have proven attractive to brands from the media, sports and entertainment world, or companies who use the platform to offer customer support. The ability to host Tweetcasts does require a paid Nestivity account, which starts at $19 monthly for a Pro account that includes a 90-day archive.

What do you think? Do you prefer the free-wheeling feel of classic Twitter chats — or are you excited to try out a more structured Tweetcast around shared content?

This seems similar to what Twubs is doing with their new Twitter chat support. From initial thoughts, looks a bit cluttered, but maybe that’s just me – will check it out, cheers!

http://therealtimereport.com/ Tonia Ries

My understanding is that Twubs let’s you create branded chat pages, but doesn’t include the ability to host media.

http://www.pammarketingnut.com PamMktgNut

True. Excited for @medialabrat & OneQube acquisition of tweetchat dot com. We have some exciting things up our sleeve there ;)

http://dannybrown.me/ Danny Brown

Hmm, must have changed since I last used it. Moderation side allowed for rich media (videos, images, etc) to be displayed.

http://therealtimereport.com/ Tonia Ries

Hi @dannybrown:disqus – I reached out to the Twubs team to clarify this, and here’s the difference: the Twubs platform lets you chose whether or not you want to display media from *within the Tweet stream*. In other words, if a Tweet includes an image or video, that can either be displayed in both the feed and the header as thumbnails, or that function can be turned off (since some chat users found it distracting). Here’s an example of a Twubs page that has the media display turned on: http://twubs.com/121212Concert — the images in the horizontal bars at the top are thumbnails of images that were shared via tweets in the stream.

With Nestivity Tweetcasts, you can load ppt, docs, pictures, youtube videos, etc., and the moderator controls what is displayed there independently of what’s share on the Twitter stream.

Hope that helps!

http://dannybrown.me/ Danny Brown

Perfect – that’s what I was thinking about!

http://www.pammarketingnut.com PamMktgNut

We tried using Twubs today for #GetRealChat w/IBM as guest and it gave us all kinds of problems. Many of these tools are struggling w/the real time experience given Twitter’s latest API changes.

http://www.pammarketingnut.com PamMktgNut

I agree with you @dannybrown:disqus. It is much of why I haven’t got on the Nestivity band wagon yet. I don’t see yet what it does above and beyond Facebook or Twitter other than curating content. Even the folks who are using it are not using it that much.

@Tonia_Ries:disqus do you know any case studies where this is bringing value /ROI to community owners using the tool? May not exist yet given it’s still early in market.

http://therealtimereport.com/ Tonia Ries

The Nestivity team told me they currently have about 1,000 users on the platform. Maybe @henrymin:disqus can point us to a brand case study?

http://www.pammarketingnut.com PamMktgNut

I think this is great and would like to lear more. There is definitely a market for this.

However, on the flip side you lose one of the greatest benefits of more open tweet çhats which is the viral impact and tapping into one another communities.

We are launching a platform for chat hosts, brands and participants and look forward to exploring how this tool could fit w/in our biz model.

henrymin

Hi Pam – my team will reach out asap. Just saw the email. Thank you!

http://www.pammarketingnut.com PamMktgNut

Saw your email and will reply tomorrow. Sorry, today was a very busy day. Looking fwd to learning more!

http://therealtimereport.com/ Tonia Ries

@PamMktgNut:disqus the tweets still get shared on Twitter, so you would still see some viral impact. For me, I actually love the slightly chaotic nature of traditional chats — I think a Tweetcast would be a different experience. Not necessarily better or worse, and definitely more appropriate for certain types of events.

http://www.pammarketingnut.com PamMktgNut

I agree @Tonia_Ries:disqus on the fact it’s simply a different experience. I also like the chaotic nature of the live chats as do many of our clients.

http://therealtimereport.com/ Tonia Ries

guess some of us are just crazy that way! ;-)

henrymin

Tonia – Thanks for covering our new community platform feature. We can’t wait to see how Brands and the Enterprise drive stronger two-way dialogue with their followers with LIVE tweetcast events. I believe this offers the ability to webcast rich-media in real-time on everyone’s screens. We’ll have to keep in touch as some Brands are already organizing these webinar-like events but with the power and amplification channel of Twitter. BTW, we are hosting our own next week 6/26 at http://t.co/j8Q8XZqWNO with a star-studded panel including Lila King, CNN; Tim McDonald, Huffington
Post; Michael Brito, Edleman Worldwide; Evan Shumeyko, Ogilvy
Connections; Bryan Kramer, Pure Matter; Kristi Hines, SEO Blogger
Extraordinaire and Jure Klepic, Social Media Innovator.

http://therealtimereport.com/ Tonia Ries

What time is the 6/26 Tweetcast, @henrymin:disqus? I may be missing it but don’t see that information posted. And yes – that’s a great lineup of guests!